1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates computer applications in general, and more particularly to user customizable task-centric groupings of application components.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, a computer system includes multiple applications, each of which include an application-specific set of components that are presented and arranged according to the desires of the application developer. A computer application generally consists of various user interface components and associated processing code grouped together according to the desires of the application designer/programmer. A user of a traditional system may have to use individual parts of various, different applications in order to complete a single task. For example, when scheduling a meeting, a user may have to first use email, instant messenger, or other communications applications to contact all attendees to determine a time to hold the meeting. After the user has determined an appropriate time to hold the meeting, he or she may use a calendar program to actually schedule the meeting, such as in an organization wide calendar. Additionally, the user may compose a meeting agenda and other documents in a word processing and/spreadsheet program. As the meeting time approaches, the user may return to an email (or other communications) program to send out reminders about the meeting. Thus, individual components of different applications may be required to complete a single user task, such as scheduling a meeting. Furthermore, traditionally there is no way for a user to rearrange or group the individual features of the various applications into a single task-oriented user interface.
Additionally, multiple applications may include similar (or duplicate) user interfaces, processing code, and stored data. For example, an email program and an instant messenger application both may maintain individual address books with no way of coordinating between the two lists and may also both include similar user interface and processing code to create and maintain the individual entries of the address books. A user may have to update a contact's information in both the email program and the instant messenger application. Thus, traditional computer systems provide an application-centric interface to a user and users must determine for themselves those applications that provide the appropriate features and components needed for any individual task.